Digital health startup MedTel raises pre-Series A funding

Telehealth platform MedTel has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding in a round led by a programme jointly run by the British and Indian governments.

The Bhubaneswar-based startup said in a statement that it will use the fresh infusion to improve its technology and product offerings in addition to expanding to other states.

Owned and operated by MedTel HealthCare Pvt. Ltd, MedTel was founded last year by Lalit Ranjan Manik, Shashank Singhal and Ajit Choudhury. It runs and an artificial intelligence and cloud-based web and mobile platform which brings together pharmacies, pathology labs, doctors and patients.

“We hope this will help us to reach underserved population not only in India and also other developing countries,” co-founder Manik said.

The funding was led by Innovative Ventures and Technologies for Development (INVENT), a programme launched by the central government's Technology Development Board (TDB) in partnership with Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom.

Social entrepreneurship support organisation Villgro is the lead incubator under the programme which will provide support aimed at creating a viable social enterprise (for profit) pipeline for impact investments in the eight low-income states of India (UP, MP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Orissa and West Bengal).

MedTel claims to have aggregrated 850 pharmacies and diagnostic centres as digtial health clinics. It offers more than 400 registered specialist doctors with expertise in areas including paediatrics, psychology, caridiology, neurology, oncology and diabetology.

In a digital health clinic, users can have various diagnostic tests on the spot such as blood sugar, blood pressure, ECG, spirometry, routine urine, lipid profile, among others.

The company says the average ticket size for a teleconsultation costs anywhere between Rs 90-400 as doctors’ fees, Rs 300- 400 for drugs and Rs 200–300 for diagnostics.

According to the company, it facilitates more than 6,000 teleconsultations every month. It aims to have 1.20 lakh patients aboard its platform by the end of this year.

MedTel is currently incubated in KIIT Technology Business Incubator (KIIT-TBI), the innovation and startup entrepreneurship programme at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Bhubaneswar.